These figures point to the localities where the tide of population has ebbed, and to the direction in which it has flowed; for the widely different per centages are the result of the migratory movement of the people. The appended Table VI. (page 30) exhibits in parallel columns the ascertained increase and the natural increase, or excess of births over deaths, in each of these eleven divisions. A comparison of the numbers affords some idea of the extent of migration to the principal centres of trade, manufactures, and mining industry, chiefly from the rural districts. We have seen that the absolute increase in the London division has been 440,798: the excess of registered births over deaths was only 253,989; and although this is an understatement on account of the unregistered births, a large proportion of the difference of 186,809 consists of immigrants. Nor can we be surprised at this further instalment of strangers when we recollect that more than half the inhabitants of London were born elsewhere. In the following divisions the actual increase, as ascertained by the Census, has also exceeded the natural increase :

In the West Midland division, which comprises Gloucester, Hereford, Salop, Stafford, Worcester, and Warwick, the ascertained increase and the difference between births and deaths are the same, within a few hundreds. All the remaining divisions present indications of having been exposed to a drain of population which in some cases has swept away nearly the whole of the natural increase, and in several of the counties large numbers besides. Thus in the Eastern division, consisting of Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, the natural increase was 129,726, while the ascertained increase was only 28,220, to which number the district of West Ham contributed nearly 25,000. In the South-western division, consisting of Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, and Somerset, the natural increase was 200,673; and as the actual increase was only 32,290, it is clear that persons representing the difference of 168,383 have left these counties to seek employment, or the means of improving their condition, in other parts at home or abroad. The localities thus discovered by the Census to have been partially denuded of their population are entitled to the credit of having bred the stalwart men whose labour has proved so useful elsewhere. The decrease, so general throughout the agricultural districts, has been greatest in the counties of Cambridge, Rutland (in each 5 per cent.), Norfolk, Wilts (2 per cent.), and Suffolk; Anglesey and Montgomery in Wales have also sustained a loss. How far the diminished returns may be attributed to a reduction of employment consequent upon improved methods of cultivation and the substitution of the breeding of stock for tillage, and how far to other causes inducing the unskilled labourer to carry his labour to the towns and manufacturing districts, will form a profitable subject of investigation. While an increase of population usually implies increased happiness, the converse is not equally true,

for the inhabitants of a district may decrease with advantage to those who depart and to those who remain; hence, at recent meetings of Agricultural Societies held in Norfolk and elsewhere, this falling off has been referred to in after-dinner speeches as no unfavourable circumstance.

The Registrar-General, in his Reports, exhibits the relative mortality in town and country populations, by dividing England into two portions, not very unequal in respect of numbers-one chiefly urban, and the other chiefly rural; the average annual death-rate being 20 in 1,000 in the latter, and 26 in 1,000 in the former. If we compare the population returns for 1851 and 1861 in these two classes of districts, we find that nearly three-fourths of the whole increase in the interval between the Censuses took place in the chief towns, which advanced at the rate of 19 per cent., while in the rest of England the increase was only 6 per cent., as shown in the subjoined Table::

Closely connected with the rapid advance of population in the localities devoted to commerce, manufactures, and mining, is the proportion of the sexes in different parts of the country. In all England, as we have seen, the females are more numerous than the males to the extent of upwards of half a million. As a general rule, there is a preponderance of female population everywhere; but this rule is not without its exceptions. On looking down the columns headed "Males" and "Females," in the annexed Table VII. (page 31), we find the softer sex in a minority in several of the counties. This may arise from a large employment of male labour in mining and similar operations; from the presence of a military force in barracks, &c., or of seamen in and out of vessels at the ports; or it may be caused by the females going off to other localities at a faster rate than they come in by excess of births over deaths. Thus, for the county of Derby the numbers are-males 170,509, females 168,868, the excess of 1,641 males being no doubt mainly attributable to the further

development of mining in the Derbyshire coal-fields since 1851, when the females preponderated in the county. Amongst other examples of counties possessing a larger male than female population may be mentioned the mining counties of Durham, Stafford, Monmouth, and Glamorgan. In Northumberland the females maintain a majority although a declining one. Kent has an excess of 3,225 males, and Hampshire of 10,657, no doubt attributable to the extension of our armaments and dockyard establishments, as the males in both counties were in a minority in 1851. An opposite result is observed in Lincolnshire, where the males, now in a minority of 3,597, were in excess of the females by 2,944 at the previous Census; but many navvies were then present, engaged in the construction of the Great Northern Railway.

Amongst the Superintendent Registrar's districts in which the rate of increase has been highest since 1851 (omitting those of the metropolis, shown in Table V., pages 28, 29, annexed), are the following:

Many other districts might be mentioned, in which the progress has been only a little less striking.

Of the districts which have experienced a decline of population, few are conspicuous for the extent of their loss except the City of London (within the walls), which had 10,382 fewer inhabitants than in 1851. The East and West London districts lost together 5,422. The decrease in King's Lynn district was 3,928 out of 20,530 in 1851; in Wisbeach

36,215
33,540

2,911
2,240
2,622

In 240 other districts the decrease was numerically smaller.

The whole of the facts disclosed by the Census regarding the changes which have taken place in the numbers and distribution of the people of England in the last ten years, are of unusual interest, and well deserve attentive study.

SCOTLAND,

"Scotland is of an extremely irregular figure, and its mainland is so broken up by promontories, and indented by bays or friths, that even at its most solid part there are very few points which are above 40 miles distant from some parts of the sea, and a much greater portion of the solid land lies within 30 miles of salt water. The surface also of Scotland, unlike that of England, is, generally speaking, rugged and mountainous, and most of it so unfitted for the purposes of agriculture, that it may be questioned whether more than a third of its surface could be rendered arable.** These being the physical peculiarities of Scotland, we may naturally expect to find its population, relatively to the territorial surface, smaller than in England, which contains, as we have seen, rather more than 20,000,000 of people on an area of 371⁄2 millions of acres. With a surface of about 20,000,000 of acres, Scotland had a population in April last of 3,061,329, of whom 1,447,015 were males and 1,614,314 females.

But the physical character of the country north of the Tweed, while it sufficiently accounts for the fact of the density of population being less than in England, does not wholly explain the difference in the ratio of the increase which has been shown by each succeeding Census, and in a marked degree by the recent enumeration. Between 1841 and 1851 the Scottish people increased 10 per cent., and the English 13 per cent. In the last ten years, Scotland has advanced only 6 per cent., while the numbers for England exhibit an increase of 12 per cent. How then is the difference in the rate of progress in these two portions of Great Britain to be explained? Is it occasioned by a variation in the birth and death rates ruling in the two parts of the island? Or must we again refer to the effects of migration and emigration, as affording a solution of the problem?

As regards the ratio of births and deaths to population in England and in Scotland, a difference does exist, but it will only in part explain the disparity we have referred to in the relative rates of increase. Judging from the experience of six years' registration, the average mortality in Scotland is lower than in England, but the birth rate is also lower. We must look to emigration and migration as affording the explanation we seek; and here we derive assistance from facts adduced by Dr. Strang, of Glasgow, by whom the arduous duty of superintending the Census of that city has been most efficiently performed upon the three last occasions. According to his calculations, based on the assumption that the annual birth and death rates in the four years before the operation of the Registration Act were the same as those observed since 1st Jan. 1855, the total natural increase of population was 395,387, between the censuses of 1851 and 1861; and he concludes that "there must have gone out from Scotland

*Report of Dr. Stark on the causes of death in Scotland in the First detailed Annual Report of the Registrar-General in Scotland. The details relate to the births, deaths, and marriages in the year 1855, and they were not given to the world until June, 1861. In these days of sixty-miles-an-hour express trains and immediate intercommunication between distant places, delay is become almost unendurable to a public which exhibits a restless impatience to annihilate time and space. It is to be hoped that arrangements will be made at Edinburgh to avoid in future a delay of five years in the publication of these Annual Reports.

no fewer than 222,878 persons, being the difference between the natural increase from the excess of births over deaths, and the increase as shown by the late Census."* We can have no difficulty in accepting this conclusion as to the extent of emigration from Scotland. The returns of the Emigration Board account for 183,627 Scottish emigrants who left the country, chiefly for Australia, with their knowledge; only about 39,000, therefore, have to be otherwise accounted for. Not only is the emigration spirit strong amongst the Scotch, but their tendency to travel southwards to push their fortunes in England is well known. Their footsteps, indeed, are said to point in every direction but towards the north and we have good grounds for thinking that they will continue to fulfil the old adage, that in every nook of the world where any good is to be got there is to be found "a Scot, a rat, and a Newcastle grindstone.' Nor can there be any doubt as to the class of the population which has supplied the emigrants who have left their homes in pursuit of prosperity in the colonies or elsewhere. In 12 out of the 33 counties the inhabitants have not only failed to increase by excess of births over deaths, but have diminished to the extent of 31,825, and those counties are almost entirely agricultural and pastoral. In fact, the numbers have generally declined throughout the rural portions of Scotland, particularly in the Highlands and islands. Dr. Strang considers the immediate causes of this diminution of the inhabitants of these localities to be, first, the great enlargement which has of late taken place in the farms and sheep-walks, whereby a host of small graziers and smaller agricultural tenants without energy and without capital, have disappeared; secondly, the discouragement given to unnecessary cottars; and thirdly, the effects of the recent Highland famines, which have taught the destitute and perishing dwellers in a region where the necessary supplies of food might at any time fail them, to flee for refuge to a more hospitable land. To these may be added the attraction offered by the large towns and cities where the hardy and unskilled labourer seldom fails to find employment and more comfort than in his wretched Highland home.

The commercial, manufacturing, and mining counties present a striking contrast to the state of things in the agricultural parts of Scotland as disclosed by the Census. Foremost stands the county of Lanark, where the advance of population has been 101,390, or nearly 20 per ccnt. in the last ten years. This is owing to the marvellous progress of Glasgow. At the commencement of the present century that city and its suburbs contained 83,700 inhabitants: the Census of 1861 has shown that, with the new suburbs, its population has reached to 446,395, and that, when compared with the numbers on the same area in 1851, an increase has taken place of no less than 86,200, or nearly 24 per cent. It is computed by Dr. Strang, that the natural increase in the ten years was 35,000, which has been supplemented by an immigation of upwards of 50,000 persons, who have been attracted to this important centre of Scottish trade and industry from

*Paper on. The Comparative Progress of the English and Scottish Population, read in the Economic Section of the British Association at Manchester, 1861.